How to implement dual WAN load balancing on a Cisco 1811/K9?

[starriol]

Hi guys, I need to set up load balancing for an implementation. We have 2 WAN links, one 10 MBs, the other 2.

Can anyone link to a site where I can find information on how to implement a Dual WAN failover configuration?

 

[spidey07]

Are you just wanting failover? Which would probably be best for your needs. What are you trying to protect against? There's about a dozen ways to do it, depending on what you're trying to do. Sorry to be vague, but it matters.

 

[starriol]

Hi spidey, thanks for the reply.
Basically, we have 2 WAN links, both should be used for regular Internet access and the traffic should be loadbalanced taking into account the different bandwidths.
We need failover, so that in case one link is down, everthing goes out though the other one.

 

[jlazzaro]

as spidey mentioned, there are just too many different ways to accomplish this...what are your requirements? due to complexity and learning curves, i would not go down the BGP route.

Ivan has a fairly complete article about small site multi-homing: http://www.nil.com/ipcorner/SmallSiteMultiHoming

the above load balancing solution (equal cost default routes) is best suited for like-bandwidth circuits...unless you use some advanced BGP features to load balance outbound based on link bandwidth, an active/backup configuration would best fit your scenario.

 

[her209]

In case you're feeling adventurous.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tec...00800945bf.shtml#conf4

 

[sactwnguy]

As was stated before the problem you have is unequal paths. If you are using BGP with maximum-paths, CEF will load balance per connection so some sessions will get stuck on the 2mbs circuit and others on the 10mb circuit. Also keep in mind that you are only load balancing outbound traffic unless you downstream provider is configured the same way. To be honest you are better off going with a primary/standby configuration.

 

[Cooky]

we have 2 WAN links, both should be used for regular Internet access and the traffic should be loadbalanced taking into account the different bandwidths.

Are the 2 WAN links through the same or different ISP?
Do you have static IP's, or do you only have the DHCP IP's assigned by the ISP's?
If static, do you have your own IP block & ASN, or is it assigned by one of the two ISP's?
How is your NAT set up right now?
Can the ISP's support BGP?

I know you already mentioned these are for regular Internet access, but do you have a lot of outbound traffic? (local web server, or users uploading tons of image or video files to Internet)